Introduction
Introduction
This chapter introduces the book’s methodology, arguments, and scholarly significance. Most works on women and early modern religion focus on nuns, holy women, or religious “deviants,” and emphasize rising hostility toward female autonomy as officials moved to enclose unmarried women and intensive female religiosity (e.g. mysticism, asceticism). This book takes a different approach and examines ordinary laywomen, particularly the broad population of non-elite women who frequently lived outside of both marriage and convent in colonial Spanish American cities. Through an analysis of approximately 550 wills, as well as a variety of other source materials such as hagiographies, religious chronicles, and ecclesiastical records, this study argues that the complex alliances forged between non-elite single women and the Catholic Church shaped local religion and the spiritual economy, late colonial reform efforts, and post-Independence politics in Guatemala’s capital.
Keywords: laywomen, single women, gender, Guatemala, Catholic Church, colonial Spanish America, cities, local religion
Stanford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
